Winter's Night Encounter
by MaidM
Summary: Harry finds there are some things you can only tell a stranger. Written at age twelve and kept on for sentimental reasons. Read only if you are in the mood for uber-cheese!


Disclaimer: I don't own any of it except Fingal, who is my own.  
  
Note: This story takes place the year after Harry graduates from Hogwarts, when he is eighteen. Fingal is fifteen. Just so you know this will not be continued. It's just a little stand-alone I thought up in one of my frequent walks to school. The song is called "Song for a Winter's Night" by Sarah Mclachlan.  
  
* * * *  
  
The lamp is burnin' low upon my tabletop  
  
The snow is softly fallin'  
  
The air is still within the silence of my room  
  
I hear your voice softly callin'  
  
If I could only have you near  
  
To breathe a sigh or two  
  
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love  
  
Upon this winters night with you  
  
* * *  
  
Harry Potter walked down the empty winter streets. Night was the only safe time to go for a stroll. In the daytime he would be bombarded with wizards and paparazzi. Harry always liked the still, cool air of night. Everything was on hold, waiting for morning when the play button would be pushed again and life would go on. Ron told him he should spend less time alone. He had said it wasn't healthy and he was turning into a hermit. Harry knew though, that one of the prices of fame was that you needed to be able to enjoy your own company. He had spent years by himself at the Dursley's. He had never had friends or a real family. Never experienced love. If that hadn't scarred him for life than nothing ever would.  
  
As Harry rounded the next corner, he saw a small figure shuffle down the sidewalk, slumped over so their head was hidden. Harry saw by their clothes that they were muggle. Harry made the conclusion that he did not need to hide. None of their kind knew who he was.  
  
The muggle lifted their head to look somewhere other than the street. Harry could see that it was a girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. When she caught Harry's eyes they froze there, like a deer caught in the headlights of a descending car. Her round eyes like two great green moons. "Harry Potter." She said with a slight squeak. Harry gave a halfhearted smile as the girl collapsed onto the sidewalk.  
  
* * *  
  
The girl opened her enormous eyes to Harry staring down on her. "Are you alright?" Harry was used to girls fainting on him, once a whole pack of them.  
  
The girl's face fell in a look of total embarrassment. "I'm so sorry, you didn't have to wait for me. You probably have better things to do. I-I-I can take of myself." She said the whole thing without ever looking into his eyes.  
  
Harry laughed. "Don't worry. I've nowhere else to go." The girl smiled awkwardly, and finally looked up into Harry's face, silver in the gentle glow of the street lamps.  
  
The girl awkwardly pulled herself up into a sitting position and rubbed the sore spots on her knees where she had collapsed only minutes earlier.  
  
"Are you alright?" Harry ducked his head down to look at her in the eyes.  
  
"Let me see." The girl smiled reluctantly and pulled the hem of her loose jeans up over her knees. The thin legs were mangled and bruised, like long blue toothpicks. Harry's eyes widened as he reached his own trembling hand to touch them, but she pulled away. The girl let go of the tattered pant hem and the heavy material dropped down to hang around her worn red shoes.  
  
"I can take care of myself. I've been doing it for the past 5 years."  
  
"Who are you?" Harry's eyes were wide with amazement.  
  
"My name is Fingal."  
  
* * *  
  
Harry threw his head back and laughed. Fin smiled proudly at the small joke she had muttered. It had been hours that the pair had been sitting there, leaning against the worn brick building. Mainly they had just chatted about this and that, joking and teasing, never noticing the slowly lightening sky.  
  
"I-I never thought that I would b-be able to sit down and talk with The Harry Potter. I-I never thought that you would want to talk to me." Fin stammered, blushing terribly. "Mother said that nothing good would ever happen to me."  
  
"Are you ever going to tell me?" Harry broke the awkward silence that followed Fingal's stammered sentiment.  
"Tell you what" Fin turned her head from Harry's concerned gaze. "I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
"This" Harry grabbed her arm and turned it over. Fin pulled and whimpered, trying to pry free from his strong callused hands.  
  
"Who is doing this to you?" Harry motioned towards her thickly bruised underarm. "And don't play dumb with me. I know when someone's lying."  
  
"You're scaring me." Fin tried again to pry free from his hands but he held strong.  
  
"I'm not letting go 'till you tell me."  
  
Fin pushed the long strands of red-brown hair out of her eyes and looked at the ground. "It started 4 years ago. When I was 11."  
  
"When you started at Hogwarts?"  
  
"When I didn't." Fin's gaze shifted back to Harry's, her eyes full of tears.  
  
* * *  
  
The smoke is rising in the shadows overhead  
  
My glass is almost empty  
  
I read again between the lines upon each page  
  
The words of love you sent me  
  
If I could know within my heart  
  
That you were lonely too  
  
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love  
  
Upon this winters night with you  
  
* * *  
  
Fingal was a squib. Her situation was about the apposite of Harry's. At the age of eleven she had waited patiently for her letter, and waited, and waited but it had never come. It was September and there was no word from Hogwarts. Her mother had even gone all the way to Dumbledoor, telling that he had made a mistake but he held strong. Fingal was a squib, and there was nothing her parents could do about it.  
  
Harry leaned against the flaking wood of his window frame. Snow was falling, soft and white onto the cold brown earth. Harry liked snow. After a snowfall the world seemed shinny and new. And pure. Harry had heard somewhere that white signified purity. He had never heard anything so true. Winter nights were still, waiting. Waiting.  
  
Harry turned his mind back to his and Fin's last words together. "How could anyone do this to any other human being?" Harry touched his wand to the bruises scattering Fin's arms and legs, healing them quickly with a simple spell.  
  
"It's not as bad as some others got it." Fingal turned to look at Harry. Her eyes were no longer full of tears. "At least they loved me, for a time. We were so happy. They loved me so much." She banged her hand against the crumbling brick wall. "It all changed when I turned 11, but by then I could take care of myself. They loved me when I needed it most. When I was young. I think you had it worse then me."  
  
"The Dursleys never hit me." Harry said with firmness.  
  
"But they never loved you. I had love. Do you even know what love is?" Harry thought of his friends, Ron and Hermione. He smiled.  
  
"Now I do." Fin smiled at him.  
  
"What's more important? This," She pointed to her own mangled body, "Or this." She reached over and tapped his chest. "Think about it." She then stood and walked away, a new kind of pride and hope in her walk, but only then did Harry notice her wincing and stumbling with every step.  
  
* * *  
  
Harry Potter walked into the cold tiled floor of his kitchen and swung open the refrigerator door. He pushed away the remnants of last night supper to try and find some breakfast. There was no such luck. Harry poured himself a glass of orange juice and took out his wand from his bathrobe pocket to re-heat a Tupperware container of spaghetti. As he gulped down the warm, meaty noodles, he noticed that The Daily Prophet had dropped into his kitchen from a solitary window, propped open for just that purpose. He bent down to pick it up, but never made it there. Before he could even touch the curled parchment, folded neatly so that the front page would be visible to all, he saw the black and white photograph presented there.  
  
Harry collapsed onto the ground and leaned shakily against the counter. Picking up the paper in trembling hands he read the headline, flashing in a Fluorescent primary colour. GIRL FOUND BEATEN TO DEATH OUTSIDE FORMER DEATH- EATER'S HOUSE. In the picture was depicted a young girl, so bruised and bloody that she was hardly recognizable, but from behind the severe injuries that the medical wizards were beginning to repair, Harry spotted a strand of red-brown hair, and a pair of round eyes, its lids draped lightly to cover the brilliant green that lay there beneath.  
  
* * *  
  
The fire is dying now; my lamp is growing dim  
  
The shades of night are liftin'  
  
The mornin' light steals across my window pane  
  
Where webs of snow are driftin'  
  
If I could only have you near  
  
To breathe a sigh or two  
  
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love  
  
Upon this winters night with you  
  
And to be once again with you. 


End file.
